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Today’s topic: Hiring based on looks, image

Today’s topic: Hiring based on looks, image

By Elizabeth Ellis

“What happens when you judge someone based on how they look? Should all people — regardless of race, ethnic background, religion, gender, disability or socioeconomic status — have the same opportunities to apply for and be hired for jobs? Should businesses be allowed to hire based on an image or message they are trying to promote?”

These are the questions I posed to my students recently, as we contemplated concepts like culture, bias and discrimination. While the vocabulary may be new to the eighth graders I teach, their perception of the concepts is already well developed. As we began to think about why people discriminate and are discriminated against, we sketched on the board the “ideal American.” You know the guy — white, youthful, athletically built, attractive, intelligent, middle-class and well dressed. “So what?” I asked; there isn’t anything wrong with this guy. A student in the back of the classroom raised her hand and said, “If you aren’t that guy, you get made fun of.”

It is no surprising revelation that we prefer people who most closely resemble this “ideal American” that my students were quickly able to define — his image is a staple in our media. It is when we act on our preferences, through behaviors like bullying or hiring based on appearances (just to name a few), that we are discriminating.

We most often hear about incidents of discrimination when they appear to be racially motivated, whether intentional or unintentional. Perhaps this is because it is one aspect of identity that cannot be changed, whereas our American culture tells us that things like our appearance and socio-economic status can be changed. A recent New York Times article explores race relations on a college campus (where African American attendance is declining). In the article, many of the racial incidents that arose were discriminatory in an inherent, joking manner — for example, a “hood” themed fraternity party. Individuals of all races interviewed for the piece said that they attributed much of the cultural insensitivity to ignorance.

When I overhear and reprimand students for making off-color, stereotypical comments to one another, more often than not, they claim ignorance. “I was just joking,” and “I didn’t mean it like that” are just a few of their legitimate excuses. Race is sometimes the theme of these exchanges, but most are honed in on other aspects of an individual’s appearance that deviates from that prescribed “ideal American” image that my students identified. I wanted my students to think about what factors other than race do we make assumptions about people based on? Furthermore, how do these factors intersect with one another to allow appearance-based discrimination to happen in our everyday lives?

Students in my classes agreed that when it comes to being picked on, some people just need thicker skin. This may be true, but where do we draw the line? Is making fun of someone’s weight or shoe brand less harmful than antagonizing them for their skin color?

Next we looked at a text about restaurant hiring and labor divisions, considering who typically works in the “front” of the restaurant and who works in the “back” as a springboard to talk about appearance-based hiring. While students in my classes unanimously agreed that discriminating based on race was unacceptable, the majority of them believed that businesses should be allowed to hire based on an image or message that they are trying to promote. As examples, they brought up the teen clothing brands Hollister and Abercrombie, whose employees tend to fit the slender, attractive, youthful image displayed in their posters. One student that was particularly opinionated in favor of hiring for a specific image said that if people are turned down because of appearance, they should “lose weight or get a job somewhere else.” Because of their consensus, it was apparent that most students weren’t able to connect their lives and the bullying they experience among their peers to society at large. If it isn’t OK to discriminate based on race, then why is it acceptable to hire (or not hire) people because of other aspects of their appearance?

The answer to this question shares a vein with my students’ justification of bullying — people need “thicker skin.” That leaves us with two options: Change yourself or ignore it. Attentiveness to bullying and efforts to stop it have increased, both in schools and online, but the motivating factors behind bullying do not exist in some black hole of grade school. We internalize social preferences and act on them as adults, making instant decisions about whom to interact with, whom to trust and who to hire based on the way an individual looks. We advocate to our youth that individuality should be respected, but in the “real world,” we expect people to live up to a social norm that is physically impossible for some and culturally abhorrent for others. How can we expect our youth to lead such an initiative?

* Elizabeth Ellis is a member of The Courier-Tribune’s 2014 panel of guest columnists. A Ramseur native, she graduated from High Point University in 2013 and is currently teaching 8th grade Social Studies and Language Arts in Forsyth County. She lives in Winston-Salem with her adopted Cocker Spaniel, Cash. Contact:eaeng3114@gmail.com